Captivating Captured Chairs

I highly recommend visiting the eerie and ethereal Chiharu Shiota show at the Rochester (Minnesota) Art Center.  A cobweb environment made of black string is stretched throughout a large exhibition space.  The threads in the center area capture several burned and blackened chairs.  One chair lacks a leg.

There are webs of threads on the exterior walls and you walk around the central netted area through tunnels of black threads.  In this photo, the curves of the walls are echoed by still-in-utero Charlotte, also walled-in, and due to be born the next day.  Watching other people in the space can seem odd; they seem to enter an impenetrable space. (See this video.)

The whole experience was a bit anxiety-producing, my husband pronounced.  The white walls covered with thinner and thicker layers of interlaced black threads looked unclean or unshaven, as if a razor would be in order.

And for all of you who are weavers or work with threads, I guarantee you will peer closely and long – how does she DO that?